Morning Headlines: Property Managers Behaving Badly

The old Reilly Real Estate office as seen in a Google Street View image

Joseph Reilly of Reilly Real Estate pled guilty in federal court to stealing more than a million dollars total from various building owners who paid him to manage their properties. Rather than collect payments for the owners, Reilly took rent and utility money from tenants and used it to cover his own expenses over the course of many years. It sounds like a fairly tragic fall from grace, according to Alex Wigglesworth of philly.com:

Reilly once had a solid reputation in the industry, according to John Featherman, a realtor and Philly.com columnist…Court documents appear to back up claims that Reilly was at one point a well-regarded businessman.

But the decline was precipitous. In 2013, because Reilly had filed for bankruptcy, the Pennsylvania Real Estate Recovery fund distributed thousands of dollars related to 87 claims brought against him personally or against his company.

Reilly admitted during [an] interview that he started using rental proceeds to cover his own expenses when his business began to falter, according to prosecutors...Reilly faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Sept. 3.

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